Donald Trump and Neocons Bash Deal that Freed U.S. Soldier from Taliban Custody

On Saturday, Donald Trump took a break from retweeting delusional sycophants begging him to run for president to comment on the successful rescue of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the United States’ last (and only) prisoner of war in Afghanistan.

News had broken that Bergdahl was coming home after five years of being detained by the Taliban. As part of a deal brokered by the White House, five Guantánamo Bay detainees would be freed and transferred to live with their families in Qatar, in exchange for Berdgahl’s return. Predictably, the Taliban called the prisoner swap a major victory.

One expects Trump to weigh in on any given situation with the most obtuse angle, but it’s not every day that an entire narrative coalesces around his buffoonery. In the days since President Barack Obama and Bergdahl’s parents announced the deal at the White House, the attention of many writers and pundits has narrowed to focus on the “questions” surrounding Bergdahl’s disappearance five years ago and speculation that national security has been harmed by his rescue.

A soldier in Bergdahl’s unit wrote on the Daily Beast that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down,” prompting that Web site’s hawkish national-security reporter, Eli Lake, to tweet that Bergdahl was “no hero.” The Beast also focused on the White House’s evolving language surrounding Bergdahl, pointing out that the officials had somewhat recently started calling Berdgahl a “prisoner of war,” and quoting experts “worrying that the Taliban will start calling its captured soldiers ‘prisoners of war,’ too.”

Imagine, a world in which “captured soldiers” are called “prisoners of war”! Let’s leave aside the fact that Gitmo has long been a blight on our nation’s integrity, and even sidestep the obvious reality that if we are in a war in Afghanistan, soldiers captured on both sides are prisoners of that war. Such an idea is clearly beyond those who populate certain corners of American punditry, who would rather think of those engaged with the American military in the Middle East not as combatants in a war, but insane non-people.

In his own article on the Bergdahl deal, Lake details that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel became satisfied that, if released, the five detainees would not pose a significant threat to the United States. (Clapper is the kind of guy who not only believes the N.S.A. should monitor the digital communications of every single American, but goes the extra mile and lies to Congress about it—he’s not exactly a flinty dove.) Lake also quotes Anand Gopal, an expert on the war and Afghanistan and the author of No Good Men Among the Living, who offers this take: “The Taliban may be hoping these guys are going to rejoin the fight, but this is mainly a huge propaganda win.” As part of the terms of their release, the five former Gitmo detainees must remain in Qatar for a year after their release.

In Warsaw on Tuesday, Obama defended his administration’s actions, noting that he believes the government has “pretty sacred rule and that is we don’t leave our men or women in uniform behind and that dates back to the earliest days.”

“Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity. Period. Full stop. We don’t condition that,” Obama said.

General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed that sentiment, posting on Facebook that while the Army will look into allegations of desertion, “questions about this particular soldier’s conduct are separate from our effort to recover ANY U.S. service member in enemy captivity.”

Both Obama and Dempsey said the deal was the best and potentially final opportunity to bring Bergdahl home. For a preview of how right-wing commenters might react to these statements, take a look at how former undersecretary of Homeland Security and deputy director of FEMA Michael D. Brown reacted to similar comments made by Hillary Clinton:

Hillary just quoted on @9NEWS that she supports tradition of not leaving soldiers on the field. Does this apply to Ambassadors? #Benghazi

Likely buoyed by the increasingly antagonistic rhetoric surrounding Bergdahl, Trump interrupted his stream of self-aggrandizing retweets to again comment on the case. By Tuesday, though, he seemed to fit right in with conservative national-security commentators, and this tweet proved even more popular than his first:

That the Obama administration didn't know the facts about who Bergdahl was before making the stupid 5 killers for one trade is pathetic!

It is indeed true that, as the late Michael Hastings revealed in a 2012 profile, Bergdahl had grown disillusioned with the war, and his service in it. He may have walked off duty, and, if so, it’s understandable that some of his fellow soldiers resent him for having to risk their lives in ensuing search operations. There are real “questions” surrounding Bergdahl’s disappearance. But obsessing over those questions and speculating on the answers to the point of assassinating the character of a soldier who served his country and grappled with what it means to be a player in an ill-advised conflict is offensive. That it’s hawkish, neocon pundits and overinflated egoists like Trump sounding these alarms and decrying the deal that brought home a prisoner of war only adds insult to injury, and demonstrates how “support our troops” is a sentiment that too often gives way to political point-scoring and national-security fearmongering.